


Apocryphal People

by annhellsing



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dealing With Some Shit With Sex, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Semi-Public Sex, Slight Narrative Inconsistencies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 10:45:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20445857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annhellsing/pseuds/annhellsing
Summary: In another life, a chevalier offers a rose to the girl born to embody Andraste. But this is not another life.





	Apocryphal People

**Author's Note:**

> lol whoops i forgot the whole false future thing comes before skyhold. rip. oh well????

Would that you could command like Cassandra, weave goodwill like Josephine. Would that you could be what everyone needed, forever. As it stands, you barely know what you want. 

Well, there is one thing. 

One body, one voice, one heart that tugs against yours with ribs as an afterthought. You rush through Skyhold’s gardens, past people who know better than to get in your way. The Herald walks and they’re doubly commanded to follow and flee. 

In your wake is a tailspin of shrinking violets and furiously important people. But there is one person you’d like to look on, you chase him. 

Before him, before Blackwall you were very good at keeping your strangers strained. But the sight of him, outside Haven’s walls in the cold was too lonely to leave be. You talked to him because you pitied him. You came back because you learned he didn’t need it. 

Wind, fire and demons. He could stand against all three in quick succession, scowling and throwing the blade of his broadsword against vulnerable jugulars. He could do it, he could lead the inquisition. 

It seems, more and more, like anyone could but you. 

You know better than to say as much, certain conversations make him so nervous. You’d much rather see him happy, it’s usually in conjunction with seeing him safe. 

Of course, the one time you left him here you’d become the bearer of terrible knowledge. You hadn’t seen him in a cell at Redcliffe Castle, shaking with terror and wonder at an inquisitor reanimated. No, you hadn’t been privy to his horrors. 

There is no ghost, no haunted look in his eyes when you rush for the stable doors. It’s only relief, something you know too well from him and momentary elation. Perhaps he expects you to stop, you always have. You don’t. 

The soft thud of your chest colliding with his passes unnoticed by anyone else. You hug him tight with no concern as to what he thinks of it. 

Above you, Blackwall smiles. 

“Everything,” he pauses as if caught somewhere in disbelief. His arms loop around your waist. “All right?” 

You’re hugged back with an insistent gentleness you didn’t expect. Blackwall’s tense shoulders and stiff muscles go slack. He melts into the embrace like he’s not certain when the next will come.

Being hugged isn’t exactly common in his line of work, you suppose. But it’s good that he likes it, he feels like he does. 

The smell of cedar and leather surrounds you, your warden’s been carving again. When you’ve had your fill of tight hugs and clear signs of mutual affection, you pull away and look to his workbench. 

A new figure sits there, no longer a griffon. It looks like the outline of a horse, most of it hidden still in the block of wood. But two, triangular shapes not unlike wings burst from the back of the steed. You look up at him. 

“Yes, it was just as I thought,” you say, “painfully boring. Be glad I didn’t bring you.” 

“Always good to know when I’ve been looked out for,” Blackwall hums. His chest rumbles with an unsung laugh, you find yourself smiling. 

“Any time,” and you say no more about that terrible castle. 

“Was I missed much all the same?” he asks with a pointed, downward look at your half-embrace. You’re still holding on to him. “Because, or perhaps, in spite of the boredom?” 

“Oh,” you sigh. Your head tilts, as if seeing him with fresh eyes. “You haven’t the slightest idea.” 

It wasn’t a year for you, nor really for him. But it happened, no use arguing otherwise. And all the suffering that you unmade, in some small pocket of the world, flourished.

Blackwall opens his mouth, but you never find out what he intended to say. You feel pushed, desperately in want of yet more affection. By your own desires, you’re shoved towards him. Your lips on his is otherwise unceremonious but uniquely perfect. 

Not counting a few, drunken kisses, this is the first. You kiss him for the first time with wood shavings dancing like snow in the fading sunlight. He’s held against your body with a vicelike grip, a desperation. He doesn’t want to move, either way. 

He kisses you back instead, revelling in how you touch him. Like climbing heat, a sparking flame you grab at his back and shoulders. Blackwall’s loved safely before, but this bears no resemblance to what’s become familiar. 

There’s people outside, important people who want to speak to their inquisitor. And you’re in here, kissing him and promising he was dearly missed. 

It shouldn’t be like this, he shouldn’t take pleasure in this kind of deception. But he wants to, so he does. Temptation’s never been something he could resist. 

His cheeks are hot, he’s unwilling to explore you with the same voracity. Though he cares, he does and he shows it with the occasional squeeze around your waist. It’s not possible to get any closer but he still tries it. 

Your arms reposition themselves, thrown around his neck with careless abandon. His eyes stay closed, love-locked in the heat of the moment. Maybe, when he opens them the two of you won’t be alone any more. Maybe this will come crashing down on him as it always does. He drags his tongue over your lower lip instead and urges you to grant him entry. 

The thrill in him when you do is new. Even if he had his fair share of tumbles in the wild world, as a young chevalier, none of it ever felt as this does. He’s excited, truly excited. This feels right. 

So, he stops it. The push that breaks the kiss is dealt by his hand. Blackwall needs to look at you, look around him and know with some certainty that this sudden shift won’t bring hell down upon the two of you. 

But he’s alone with your shocked face and a cold breeze floating in from the open stable doors. 

“You’re not—” he falters, refuses to tell you how to feel. “Are you sure about this?” 

“I kissed you, didn’t I?” you ask, sighing with a special brand of impatience. He’s seen it in the war room, a careless kind of frustration when faced with needless difficulty. 

If only you knew. There’d be nothing difficult about this at all, it wouldn’t’ve happened. 

“Still,” Blackwall tries, though not very hard. 

He gets the feeling he’s not been told the whole story, though he can’t fault you for that. But your expression of hurt softens to understanding between heartbeats. You put a hand to his ruddy cheek, your thumb stroking his cheekbone. 

“We’re inadequate,” you say with a sad, little smile. You know it isn’t true where he’s concerned, Blackwall’s capable. Not that he’d agree. Your word choice is specific. “But we’re better off together, wouldn’t you say?” 

“You, inadequate?” Blackwall scoffs, “and I thought you gave your enemies no quarter.” 

“Don’t argue with me,” you tell him. But you note the smile twitching at the corner of his lined mouth. “The point I’m making is beautiful.” 

“I can agree with the point,” he says. 

“Redcliffe was awful,” you reply, it’s quietly said. Blackwall nods as you hug him again. It’s gentler, less frantic, you lay your head on his chest. “I’ll go nowhere else without you, even if it’s dull as drying paint.”

“Where my lady goes, I go, then,” it’s a statement offered up with more certainty behind it than even you expect. “Easy as that.” 

“Blackwall,” you start. You miss the flinch, the way the smile on his face dies. But you move in for a second, softer kiss that he allows. “I really do want this. Do you?” 

He heaves a long sigh. In the end, he doesn’t say it, he can’t. To voice it would be kin to giving up completely, to giving in to whatever ruin the dalliance will bring. But he nods, nothing in the world could stop him from doing that. 

Your response is a wider smile, a third hug given at forward trajectory that sends him staggering once again. It’s impossible to keep the smile off his face, then. 

Lips are on his for a time, but then they find his blushing cheeks. They touch his forehead, his temples. The feeling of barely-there kisses over his closed eyelids steal the breath from his lungs. 

He explores at your slight insistence, one hand staying at your mid-waist. The other hesitates before travelling decidedly higher. 

It wanders over armour as if seeking more welcoming territory. You squirm against him as he touches your side, stalling kisses to laugh against his mouth. He’s tickling you, Blackwall moves his hand higher. 

He’s not sure who dabbles in the obscene first. His hand finds the curve of your breast and nearly the same time yours does the stirring in his trousers. The leaps inelegant. But by your own admission the two of you weren’t made for that fabled, courtly love. 

That’s for who you might’ve been. In another life, a chevalier offers a rose to the girl born to embody Andraste. 

In this one, you moan into his mouth. 

It’s accompanied by a sheepish kiss, an attempt at hiding the evidence. But Blackwall knows all he needs. As he staggers backward, partly away from the open door and any wandering eyes, you’re taken with him. 

You reciprocate, touching him with unprompted insistence as he kneads your breast. Like a conversation, you take as he does. 

“We should—” you break the kiss and cut yourself off in the same breath. Your lovely eyes look pointedly to the wooden floor above your heads. 

“Right,” he says, he’s slightly out of breath. “The loft, no one will bother us up there.” 

“Not if they know what’s good for them,” you add. You snatch up his hand like a miser seeking gold, starting off towards the stairs with a confident swagger. Blackwall follows, just as he promised to. 

It’s as if the two of you seek to actively prove how little you care for convention. You decide, quite unprompted, that the top of the stairs is far enough. Blackwall’s half-dragged by his wrist in your grip when you sit on the last step before the loft. 

He casts a glance over his shoulder, but no one’s even thought of following the inquisitor on your warpath. His eyes return to your impish smile, to your knees cast open and inviting.

Blackwall’s knees aren’t what they used to be, it doesn’t stop him from sinking to them. The wood creaks beneath two bodies half-lying on the incline, but it should hold the weight just fine. 

Andraste preserve him, or whatever spirit has you looking at him with so much lust in your eyes. It’s been years, he knows, as he leans in for another kiss. He’s greedy for it, desperate and uncaring in the face of intimacy. Hang his shame, his self-hatred. It can mingle with yours a safe distance from the love that’s shared. 

You indulge him for two more kisses before very prominently pushing your knees further apart. It’s a request, even still, and one he’s all too happy to grant. 

Blackwall moves between your legs, settling as comfortably as he can on stairs. His head at eye-level with your belly, he surprises even himself with a sudden, forward movement. He kisses the curve of your stomach over a layer of leather and buttons. A hand’s at his forehead, your hand brushing hair back from his forehead. 

Your other hand’s busy undoing those buttons, the buckles underneath. You care very little for undressing completely, only lifting your hips enough to shove trousers and underclothes down your thighs. Blackwall’s no simpering fool, no idiot unable to understand what’s next. 

Let his lovemaking skills never be described as hateful. Though he does lunge, eager to put his mouth somewhere else on you, there is no attack. He does not bite, he presses his lips to your core and kisses you. 

The exasperated noise above his head, the sound of you sputtering is like music. 

His tongue embraces your heat, that conversation takes a drastic turn. There’s two hands in his hair, now. In Blackwall’s experience, there’s a fight between too much of a good thing and a desire to give in to it. 

You entertain the former for a second, maybe, but then your hips buck hard against his mouth. He tastes you as you command it, pushing him where he needs to be. Blackwall follows, he’d have it no other way. 

His appetite gets along famously with yours, the thrust of your hips falls in time with a certain rhythm. Blackwall favours gentle laps with the bed of his tongue to start, but he becomes more precise very quickly. 

He knows to target that little bundle of nerves, he circles it with a sureness that nearly has you asking who he is. But his face is still hot, that much is familiar. But Blackwall shifts forward, reaching to lift your hips without a trace of his former uncertainty. 

While you have no doubt that his plan would’ve been terribly erotic, you cry out as the sharp edge of the stair digs into your shoulder blade. There is no room for whatever he’s planning, Blackwall drops your hips and lifts your head. 

“What is it?” he rumbles. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing,” you exclaim, “you’re perfect, really, just mind where you grab. I’ve nowhere to go but backward.” 

He mumbles an apology, mostly to your inner thigh. But you refuse to let him be embarrassed with himself. You sit forward, starting to unlace your boots. The damnable things are tossed down the stairs, your giddy laugh follows them. 

Your trousers are fully removed soon after, leaving you without any encumbrance. Blackwall touches your bare calf, you seem to know what he’s thinking before the idea can fully synthesize in his mind. 

A pair of legs, legs he might have looked at with a certain amount of admiration hook over his shoulders. Blackwall dips his head with no further prompting necessary. 

You’re still a firestorm, demanding plenty from him and offering the sound of his name in return. Oh, he’ll take it happily. Your back’s curved like a spring, you press against him and moan with reckless abandon. 

Maybe no one will hear a thing. Maybe it’s you, him and the moon overhead. The sun went dark around the time you kissed him, after all. Maybe everyone’s inside. 

Or maybe there’ll be a new rumour to add to the mill. You throw your head back and give a cry of his name. Make that two new rumours. 

He has a way of hushing your manners, of drawing from you the loveliest noises. His tongue coaxes you somewhere hot and bright and perfect, he treats your pleasure as nothing short of imperative. 

And he does not stop, not for anything. 

Maybe he’s nervous, you consider with a smirk. To keep the inquisitor of all people waiting might prove fatal, indeed. You ease up on how much you’re pulling his hair as if to prove a point. 

Blackwall’s eyes, dark and sweet as a lover’s touch yours when your grip goes a bit slack. You smile at him, looking unrepentantly flirtatious. 

It’s almost impossible for him to stare at someone who wants him so terribly. He can’t remember the last time he let himself have something unabashedly decent. Even if you were honest with him, united yourself with his flaws by presenting your own he knows the truth. 

You’re terrified and good inside. He’s only half that. So he focuses on making you come and prays it’ll be good enough. 

The way you babble and keen makes it sound like it is. You tug on his hair but are careful at this point not to let wanton lust bring him harm. He’s grateful for that, his mouth traces the letter o around your clit.

Your legs go a little numb as you come undone. There’s no bright light, just a little fuzziness around the edges and a pleasant warmth. That good feeling eventually retreats, leaving you gently shaken and a little stirred up. 

A shin slides off his shoulder, but Blackwall turns his head and presses a kiss to your inner thigh before he lets you go. You’re breathing hard, beaming broadly and running your fingers through his hair. 

“That was something,” you tell him through shamelessly laboured breaths. Your heartbeat starts to make sense again after minute five. Blackwall’s red under the rising moon. “That was excellent.” 

He’s glad to hear it, he’ll tell you so when the ache in his chest subsides enough to let him speak. He did well, he nods to let you know you’ve been heard. 

It’s difficult to say how long you languish on the step, at least until the crickets take up their instruments. But it’s not so bad being out here with him, never has been though this is the first time post-throes-of-passion. You could get used to this. 

You’ve built your house, you’ve made this bed. No one else will share it with you, no one else would be enough.


End file.
